For pipelines where the security rule enforces itself
Hire DevSecOps Engineers
A pipeline that ships fast can still carry a secret in plain text or a vulnerable dependency nobody scanned for weeks. These engineers are tested on catching that exact gap between shipping fast and shipping safely. They are then placed to keep security enforcing itself as the pipeline keeps changing.
- Profiles typically within two business days
- Replacement Assurance: If an engineer is not the right fit, a replacement from our own team starts within ten business days of your request, at no extra cost
- You interview before placement if you want to
- At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast
- 14-Day Risk-Free Trial: For your first engineer on a time-and-materials engagement. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop
How we evaluate a DevSecOps engineer
The tasks, the signals and the onboarding, walked through by the people who run them.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Published, not promised
The assessment behind every engineer we send.
The DevSecOps bar is published, not assumed: five competencies, the exact task behind each, and the shortcut that ends a candidacy. Most interviews ask which scanning tool someone has configured before. This one asks whether a security rule can enforce itself.
What we listen forWhether they encode the rule, not just document it.
A security rule requiring encrypted storage buckets is currently enforced by a manual checklist reviewers sometimes skip. Propose a fix.
- What strong sounds like
- Proposes encoding the rule as a policy check inside the pipeline itself, blocking any deployment that violates it automatically.
- What gives us pause
- Proposes reminding reviewers to check the list more carefully rather than encoding the rule so it enforces itself.
OPA · Terraform Sentinel · Policy-as-Code
Snyk · Semgrep · Dependency Scanning
HashiCorp Vault · Sealed Secrets · AWS Secrets Manager
Audit Logging · SOC2 Automation · Compliance-as-Code
02Who you actually meet
The bench, priced by seniority.
Three seniority tiers, priced honestly, and the engineers who fill each one today. Real names and photos take their place as soon as we can share them, and the standard stays exactly the same.
Engineer
Features scoped tightly enough to ship inside your review bar, every time.
The right first hire when your seniors already set the standard.
$2,400–3,100per month
Senior
The hard module nobody else wants to own, taken end to end.
Ownership of a surface, without adding a manager to your headcount.
$3,400–4,300per month
Lead
The workstream's decisions, made daily, so nothing waits on a meeting.
One accountable voice for a pod or initiative that can't afford to drift.
$4,600–5,800per month
DevSecOps engineer
3 yrs · US East overlap
Added dependency scanning to a pipeline after a vulnerable package shipped to production unnoticed
- SAST/DAST
- Policy as Code
- CI/CD Security
Senior DevSecOps engineer
6 yrs · UK + EU hours
Rebuilt a pipeline's secrets handling after a credential nearly leaked through a build log
- Secrets Management
- OPA
- Compliance Automation
Lead DevSecOps architect
9 yrs · EU + US split
Owns the security-friction standard that keeps scans fast enough that teams stop bypassing them
- Architecture
- Audit Trail Automation
- Threat Modeling
Indicative ranges, representative profiles. Exact figures and named engineers arrive with your shortlist.
Weighing this against a freelancer, a direct hire or a marketplace? See the honest comparison
03From stated problem to first change
Four steps, each closing on evidence.
This sequence tests judgement about where risk actually lives in your pipeline, not tool familiarity alone. Stopping at any point along the way owes us nothing.
Define the pipeline risk
We map where your pipeline's security controls are manual, skippable or missing entirely. The brief names that specific gap, not a list of scanning tools to know.
A brief your security lead signsMatch against your pipeline
Candidates are screened against your actual CI platform, compliance regime and existing controls. Three engineers who understand your risk beat thirty who list a scanning tool badge.
Three fits, not thirty CVsAssess on the real tasks
Your team can watch the policy-as-code and secrets-migration exercises directly. What shows up is judgement about real risk, not a rehearsed scanner configuration.
Evaluation you can watchOnboard inside your pipeline
Access, standards and a first bounded policy encoded for real. Continuity cover keeps a departure from leaving a security gate unmaintained and quietly bypassed.
An enforced policy in week one
04Evidence and proof
Engineers who made security enforce itself, not just document itself.
DevSecOps proof is a policy that blocks a bad deploy automatically, not a checklist someone remembered to follow. Every record here waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studies
The database password that had been sitting in plain text for months.
Koru Health discovered a database password committed in plain text inside a pipeline configuration file that had gone unnoticed for months. An embedded DevSecOps engineer migrated every pipeline secret to a dedicated vault and added scanning that blocks the pattern from recurring.
- Plain-text secrets in pipelines
- Eliminated
- New exposures caught
- Before merge, automatically
He turned our audit evidence into something the pipeline produces on its own, not a two-week scramble.
Sample · pending client approval
She tiered the security gate by actual risk, so a trivial change stopped taking twenty extra minutes.
Sample · pending client approval
05Three shapes, one standard
Add an engineer, a security pod, or a practice.
Most teams start with one engineer hardening controls already in the pipeline. Some need a pod that owns policy, scanning and compliance evidence end to end. Where security sits inside a wider cloud and delivery platform, we point you to the practice instead.
- Team extension
One named engineer
A single DevSecOps specialist inside your direction and your review process. The smallest commitment, and the natural first step.
- Delivery pods
A security pod
A pod with its own lead that owns policy enforcement, scanning and audit evidence end to end. You set priorities while the pod carries delivery.
- Data & Cloud
The practice, not the person
Security controls here sit inside the same practice as cloud delivery, so when the whole platform needs that discipline, data and cloud engineering takes it on.
06Straight answers
Asked before a DevSecOps hire is signed.
01What does a DevSecOps engineer actually do day to day?
Encodes security policy directly into pipelines, integrates scanning that catches vulnerabilities before merge, and keeps secrets out of configuration files entirely. A fair share of the work is automating audit evidence nobody wants to gather by hand.
02How is this different from hiring a DevOps engineer?
DevOps work centres on building and running the pipeline itself. This role centres on the security controls, scanning and compliance evidence layered into that same pipeline.
03Can we run our own interviews as well?
Yes, the published tasks are built to be reused directly. Several clients now run the secrets-migration exercise themselves in later hiring rounds.
04How fast can a DevSecOps engineer start?
A shortlist arrives within days from a bench evaluated continuously. Actual start speed after that depends on how quickly your side can grant pipeline and vault access.
05Who manages the engineer day to day?
Your security lead sets the risk priorities and signs off on policy changes. We carry the employment relationship instead, including payroll and arranging continuity if plans change.
06What if the engineer is not the right fit?
Catching it in the opening weeks means the swap happens on our side, not yours. We carry that lesson into the next engineer's brief so it does not repeat.
07Do your DevSecOps engineers use AI coding tools?
Yes, to draft policy definitions and scanning configuration quickly. The engineer still owns every exception granted, every gate tuned and every secret migrated.
08How does pricing work for a hired DevSecOps engineer?
Those figures are the planning range; the number tied to your shortlist gets fixed once the scope is clear. Monthly billing, no placement fee, notice-period exit only.